Stories

Why Google didn't tell Uber about alleged employee misconduct

Jeff Chiu / AP

Uber on Monday parted ways with Amit Singhal, who had joined the ride-hailing company just weeks earlier as senior vice president of engineering. The reason: He had been accused of sexual harassment at his prior employer, Google.

Singhal allegedly did not tell Uber the real reason he left Google in early 2016, and the company claims it didn't know until being approached by tech site Recode. So assuming this is true, that leaves us with Google—what is the search giant's role here?

Not a good look: Turns out, the answer is not much. Although Google's parent company, Alphabet, reportedly was prepared to fire Singhal after concluding that the harassment claims were "credible," it ultimately let him resign. Moreover, it gave him a dignified departure by letting him post a farewell letter that painted the picture of a well-respected executive retiring after 15 long years of service.

Standard procedure: Keeping such situations under wraps is not only common practice for employers, but also in Alphabet's best legal interest. "It's really up to the employee to disclose," Mike Delikat, who chairs the employment law practice at Orrick, told Axios. Companies usually prefer to simply confirm a former employee's time at the company when called for a job reference, and non-disclosure agreements are typically part of separation agreements, he said.

The biggest rationale is to avoid defamation lawsuits. For example, if Google had disclosed that Singhal was accused of harassment and that had cost him the Uber job, Singhal possibly could have sued for defamation (he maintains the claims are untrue). Google would then have to have proved that the accusations were true and it was making factual statements—a big headache most companies want to avoid.

Where does that leave us? Unfortunately, prospective employers often don't have formal means of learning why job candidates really left their former company—even if they were accused of sexual harassment or other misdeeds. Particularly if the job candidate lies or shades the truth, as Uber accuses Singhal of doing.

And even more unfortunate is that this creates a system that very likely puts employees, especially women, at risk. And if you think Alphabet could be held liable for not warning Uber of the situation, think again—it's under no obligation to disclose civil matters regardless of potential repercussions, according to Delikat.

Self-driving lab head urges freeze after "nightmare" fatality

Uber self-driving car in Pittsburgh. Photo: Jeff Swensen / Getty

Carmakers and technology companies should freeze their race to field autonomous vehicles because "clearly the technology is not where it needs to be," said Raj Rajkumar, head of Carnegie Mellon University's leading self-driving laboratory.

What he said: Speaking a few hours after a self-driven vehicle ran over and killed a pedestrian in Arizona, Rajkumar said, "This isn't like a bug with your phone. People can get killed. Companies need to take a deep breath. The technology is not there yet. We need to keep people in the loop."

Why it matters: Virtually every major car company on theplanet, in addition to numerous startups and tech companies, are doing live testing of self-driving vehicles — and pushing policy officials to allow them to do so.

But Rajkumar said that ordinary people in addition to automakers and tech companies have developed far too much trust in self-driving technology simply because the cars have driven hundreds of thousands of miles with only one fatality before this — a Tesla driver who slammed into the side of a truck last year.

Quote "This the nightmare all of us working in this domain always worried about."

Report: Cambridge Analytica says it could use sex, bribes to "entrap politicians"

A 4-month undercover investigation conducted by the UK's Channel 4 News revealed that Cambridge Analytica has secretly campaigned in more than 200 elections around the world, using shady tactics that include bribery and prostitution in order to entrap politicians in compromising situations. The company says they "entirely refute" the allegations.

Why it matters: Cambridge Analytica worked for Donald Trump's campaign during the 2016 presidential elections, and is at the center of a controversy for its role in harvesting data from more than 50 million Facebook profiles. Facebook announced Monday that it has hired a digital forensics firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of the company.

A Channel 4 reporter, posing as a fixer for a client working on elections in Sri Lanka, secretly filmed Cambridge Analytica's chief executive Alexander Nix as he described some of the tactics the firm employs:

“We’ll offer a large amount of money to the candidate, to finance his campaign in exchange for land for instance, we’ll have the whole thing recorded, we’ll blank out the face of our guy and we post it on the Internet.”

Nix also said they could “send some girls around to the candidate’s house,” adding that Ukrainian girls “are very beautiful, I find that works very well.”

“…Many of our clients don’t want to be seen to be working with a foreign company… so often we set up, if we are working then we can set up fake IDs and websites, we can be students doing research projects attached to a university, we can be tourists, there’s so many options we can look at. I have lots of experience in this.”

Another CA executive, Mark Turnbull, discussed how the firm pushes damaging material onto social media: “… we just put information into the bloodstream of the internet, and then, and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again… like a remote control. It has to happen without anyone thinking, ‘that’s propaganda’, because the moment you think ‘that’s propaganda’, the next question is, ‘who’s put that out?’”

Statement from Cambridge Analytica to Channel 4:

“We entirely refute any allegation that Cambridge Analytica or any of its affiliates use entrapment, bribes, or so-called “honey-traps” for any purpose whatsoever… We routinely undertake conversations with prospective clients to try to tease out any unethical or illegal intentions…”

What's next: Part three of Channel 4's documentary on Cambridge Analytica will air tomorrow at 3pm ET, and will reportedly focus on the firm's work in the U.S.